Chapter 82: Pest Control
Meir Henoch Wallach-Finkelstein, better known by the Russian name of Maxim Litvinov, was one of the major leaders of the Bolshevik Party and later the primary manager of Soviet diplomatic efforts in the interwar period, was a figure that Bruno deeply despised.
After all, it was his diplomatic efforts that would ultimately cause the iron curtain to befall over all of Eastern Europe. The Litvinov pact helped secure the doom of nations such as Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Romania, and Finland, all of which would either become subordinate to the Soviets via the dreaded Warsaw Pact or outright invaded militarily by the Soviet Union in the coming decades.
Peace was a lie. It was nothing more than an effect of smoke and mirrors. And often times peace was merely a way to buy time for more insidious endeavors. Something that Litvinov had promised these eastern European countries only to undermine their sovereignty or outright break his promises to them.
Throughout all of human history, there were only 268 of them that could be claimed to have been peaceful. But this number was mostly a fabrication, as it did not count for the tribal conflicts taking place in areas of the world that had failed to civilize until the arrival of foreign forces who recorded their history going forward.
To be honest, Bruno doubted there was a single decade in human history where the entirety of humanity was free from some form of bloody conflict. It was simply a part of human nature to fight over everything under the sun, political ideology, religion, land, resources, hell there was one war that was quite literally fought over a wooden bucket.
You give a reason for humans to justify killing each other, and they will take it in a heartbeat. Such was the nature of the species. But it was truly insidious from Bruno's perspective to promise peace, only to shove a knife in the back after the fact.
And it was for this reason Litvinov was one of the men on his list. Luckily for Bruno, Litvinov's location was given to him by one of the men directly under his command. And the little rat was hiding in Saint Petersburg, no less.
Curious choice, hiding directly beneath the nose of your most hated enemy. But then again, it was not something Bruno had expected. Should the man not have been betrayed by those close to him under the promise of clemency, then perhaps he would have hidden from Bruno's hunt throughout the duration of the war.
But unfortunately, loyalty was a rare quality in humans, a species whose nature was to prioritize their own wellbeing and prosperity above all others. To earn the unwavering loyalty of the men beneath your command, well, let's just say Litvinov was not a man capable of such a feat of charisma.
No, he had been sold out to the Iron Division, and it was perhaps because of this that the man's eyes bulged in shock when he opened his door after hearing a knock upon it to find Bruno staring at him with a wicked smirk on his face.